In the last lesson, we looked at the Straw Man fallacy. Similar to the Straw Man is the Red Herring.
In the sport of fox hunting, trainers would drag dead herring across the trail in order to train their dogs to stay on the right scent. When a dog was correctly trained, it would stay on the scent of the fox, and not be distracted by that of the smelly fish.
If you're ever in a debate, and realize that the discussion has gone off on a tangent that is not directly relevant to the original debate, you've experienced the Red Herring. It goes something like this:
Me: Come here, we need to change your poopy diaper.
My Toddler: Daddy, I can't change my diaper, I want to play cars.
Me: You can play cars when you've gotten a clean diaper.
In his youthful immaturity, my son tried to distract me with a Red Herring. The cars are irrelevant to the soiled nature of his disposable undergarments. Fortunately, this is such an obvious case of a Red Herring that any parent can instantly spot it. Often times when we are in a discussion with another adult, the Red Herring is a little more subtle, and we may not pick up on it.
Congressman Smith: The Social Security system is unconstitutional, the Constitution does not give the Federal Government the power to run a retirement savings ponzi scheme.
Senator Jones: Millions of elderly people have no other source of income. If we eliminate Social Security, they will have no way to provide for themselves.
Congressman Smith: So we need to encourage citizens to take care of their parents in old age and for people to support charities that can help those in need.
Senator Jones: But not all elderly people have children that can take care of them, and not everyone has extra money that they can give to charities.
Congressman Smith: If people weren't paying 15% of their income in Social Security, they'd have extra money to help their elderly parents and grandparents, or give to charities that could support the elderly. And it would have been better for the elderly to be saving for their own retirement while they were working rather than count on a bloated and over-budget government program to take care of them.
Do you see what happened? Senator Jones got away from Congressman Smith's argument by introducing a Red Herring. He never addressed the Constitutionality of the Social Security program. A more proper answer would have been to either come up with a legal argument that refutes Smith, or propose a solution to the problem that Smith stated, such as passing a Constitutional Amendment allowing such a system.
Like the Straw Man, the Red Herring is a common tactic of political discussions. It is often easier to avoid the subject than to address it.
Next Lesson: Ad Hominem
